


Trench-Coats and Neckerchiefs

by Tierfal



Category: Doctor Who, Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Fantasy, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Merlin fills in for the Doctor, and Arthur is the worst companion ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trench-Coats and Neckerchiefs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eltea](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Eltea).



> Written before I knew much about the Whoverse, but it holds together all right. XD

The way Arthur sees it, if they wanted to traipse around forested areas looking for huge, unnatural Nasty Things, they could have stayed at home.

He has explained this theory to Merlin at least four times since they left the TARDIS.

"_Mer_lin," he begins again.

"I'm not Merlin," Merlin tells him, catching sight of the proper trail and directing them towards it. "I'm the Doctor now, at least for a while."

"You're still bloody _Mer_lin, _Mer_lin," Arthur sniffs. "A pair of Chucks and a trench-coat isn't going to change that. You could at _least_ have left the neckerchief at home—no Doctor I've ever seen wears a _neckerchief_."

Merlin tugs at it self-consciously and glares at Arthur out of the corner of one eye. "And how many Doctors have _you_ seen?" he inquires.

"Just the one who traded places with us," Arthur replies airily. "But I figure he's emblematic."

"Well," Merlin shoots back, storming up an incline, "you're emblematic of the worst companion _ever_."

Arthur makes sure to look grievously wounded. "Pray tell," he says, blinking, "why such heinous accusations, _Mer_lin?"

Merlin whirls on him, and the trench-coat does a fantastic swooshy thing.

"_Because_," he hisses, "you ridicule me at every opportunity, you don't listen to a word I say, and you second-guess everything I do! You're _wearing a sword_! How's that for trust?"

Arthur shrugs his shoulders, which Merlin reluctantly admits look even more delectable in that tight white tee-shirt and casual hooded jacket, whether or not the clothes are at odds with the very obvious sword strapped at Arthur's side.

"I don't trust any weapon you can't skewer someone with," Arthur explains. "And your sonic hairpin thingy—"

"_Screwdriver_."

"Right, that—is a prime example."

Merlin clenches his fists and counts backwards from ten. The Doctor is not supposed to tackle his companions to the carpet of leaves on the ground and pummel them until they fight back and accidentally break his nose.

That wasn't one of the rules the other Doctor outlined for him, but he assumes it's meant to be implied.

Arthur looks surprised, so maybe Merlin seems angrier that he thought. Well, that's good; Arthur can always do to be taken down a few pegs; every time Merlin thinks he can't get more full of hims…

Arthur is not looking at him but past him, and something very big is breathing hotly down the back of his trench-coated-and-neckerchiefed-neck.

"Merlin," Arthur says slowly, "can you use magic here?"

Merlin bites his lip before realizing he doesn't want to think about teeth. At all.

"No," he answers.

It's too bad, really; he has it under good confidence that Arthur secretly finds the Gold Eye Thing extremely hot.

"Duck," Arthur recommends.

Merlin knows better than to argue.

Hastily he hurls himself out of the way, scrambling to his feet to see Arthur draw his sword and fly straight at their adversary, which appears to be the lovechild of a wolf spider and a komodo dragon.

On steroids.

With spines.

Merlin does not like this.

Arthur hacks at one scaly, segmented limb, but the abomination skitters back a step to dodge the blow. Undeterred, the prince-turned-companion gives chase, swinging and swerving, his blade gleaming brightly in the filtered sunlight as he executes a series of increasingly deft maneuvers to no avail.

The creature hisses and lunges for his neck, all of its ungodly bulk blurring into motion, but Arthur tucks himself into a flawless somersault and rolls beneath it, unfolding to thrust his sword straight up into the belly of the beast.

It puts Merlin in mind of that one part of _The Lord of the Rings_.

Not that he's read or seen _The Lord of the Rings_, but they've weirdly absorbed a great deal of culture in the temporal exchange.

In any case, utterly repugnant, pulpy green pus oozes out around the wound, and Arthur withdraws his sword, hastens out from beneath the Nasty Thing, and retreats to where Merlin stands wrinkling his nose at the sidelines.

"It's times like this that I miss my armor," Arthur remarks.

Merlin doesn't think Arthur should complain about missing _anything_ he had in Camelot, but it doesn't seem like a good time to interject.

Particularly given that the spider-monster chooses that moment to stop staggering, gather itself taller, and barrel right towards them.

No, Merlin does not like this one _bit_.

Arthur, of course, is enjoying it too much altogether.

He races forward to meet the thing, twisting, slicing, sweeping, neatly sidestepping every stabbing claw and glinting fang. He buries his sword in the creature's side again, and once more stomach-turning goo seethes from the place, but this time, the behemoth doesn't even flinch.

"Well, shit," Arthur says blankly.

Merlin frowns, figures that the Doctor didn't promote him to interstellar tour guide for nothing, and gallops forward into the fray, laying about wildly with the sonic screwdriver.

To his delight, it emits sparking surges of bluish, crackling, electric light that send the spider-monster dancing warily away—but to his dismay, they don't seem to do much more than make it madder.

"Doesn't that thing have settings?" Arthur shouts. "Stun, kill, vaporize or something?"

"Wrong show," Merlin calls back, but he glances down to fiddle with the buttons anyway.

Almost before he's even looked up, the spider-monster is upon him, its vast black eyes unblinking, surrounded as they are by smaller brethren like glazed constellations, some guarded by filmy lizard lids, others as huge and empty as the primary pair.

Merlin does not think that he will ever sleep again.

That is, if he survives this experience in the first place.

"_Arthur_!" he shrieks as the almost-comical fangs descend, and he's slipped on the leaves retreating, and he's scrabbling for a handhold to drag himself out of the way—

Arthur's blade sings through the still air as he shoves it into the juncture of the creature's head and its thorax, and viscous green fluid spurts everywhere, narrowly missing his face and hands as he hastily jerks the sword loose. The creature emits a horrible series of clickings and hisses, rearing but not relenting, and slashes with one sharp foreleg—catching Arthur with a brutal blow that opens a deep red line from his shoulder to his collarbone.

Arthur stumbles backwards and crumples to the leafy ground, grasping uselessly at the injury, his sword tumbling from his other hand to lie shining in the foliage.

The spider makes a satisfied sound and slither-scrambles towards him.

And then Merlin knows.

The question is if there's _time_—

He throws himself for Arthur's sword, his fingers mutilating the damp leaves as he scrabbles and _finds_ it and leaps to his feet, bypassing the creature's nightmarish forelegs, veering around the piercing claw-feet, to shove the sword deeply into one of the horrid bulbous eyes—and pressing the tip of the sonic screwdriver to the steel blade and jamming his finger down on the button.

The eye bursts, and disgusting black goop splatters everywhere as electricity floods up the metal and explodes through the creature's nerves, and its whole body jitters and hisses and sparks with currents like lightning. Dark smoke puffs out from the place in its scale-lined eye socket where Merlin's stroke found its mark, and he yanks the blade free and drags his monster-blood-smeared form over to where Arthur lies on the leafy ground, supporting himself on his elbows to stare in disbelief at the newly-instated Doctor.

Merlin flops down next to him and just breathes for a moment as the spider-monster makes a lot of forlorn sizzling sounds and collapses into a muddle of green goop and half-broken exoskeleton on the forest floor.

Then he gets to his knees and wipes the sonic screwdriver on his shirt.

"Doctor won't be happy to see what you've done to his coat," Arthur comments, mustering a tight smile—but his face is pale, and there's more blood staining his white shirt than Merlin would like.

"Doctor will just be happy _he_ didn't have to kill that thing," Merlin replies, polishing a last bit of spider guts from the screwdriver's head.

"You seem to be taking your role seriously," Arthur manages.

"Hold still," Merlin responds, and before Arthur can say "_Mer_lin," he's cauterizing the not-currently-prince's wound with a different sonic function.

"_MER_LIN!" Arthur howls, loud enough that a small flock of birds unperturbed by the spider-monster carnage abruptly takes flight.

"That's '_Doc_tor' to you," Merlin retorts, settling next to Arthur again and laying his head on the other boy's unaffected shoulder. "I told you you were the worst companion ever. You and your stupid sword."

"Stupid sword, eh?" Arthur prompts, reaching across to ruffle Merlin's hair. "Wasn't so stupid when it saved us both."

Merlin chews on his lip.

"You know what I want?" he asks.

"Camelot?" Arthur inquires.

"No," Merlin answers. "Whisky."

"Mmm," Arthur agrees.

"And a sonic screw."

"…_mmm_…"


End file.
